Marketing insights for selling to the world's toughest market. From Rick Spence

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Weaknesses? Maybe a few.

Entrepreneurs often have healthy egos, but they can still admit to shortcomings.

Here, courtesy of PROFITguide.com, is a listing of self-diagnosed strengths and weaknesses compiled from entrepreneurs on the 2001 PROFIT100 list of Canada's Fastest-Growing Companies.

I thought it might help you better understand the complex, often contradictory personalities of successful entrepreneurs. You may even detect a few patterns. Enjoy!

1. What do you consider your key personal strength in business? Thanks to many years of working with some great companies and great bosses, I would suggest that my greatest strength is vision. Put a stake in the ground and shoot for it.What's your biggest weakness? Lack of attention to detail.

3. STRENGTH: I'm good at vision — what needs to be done — and action-oriented to do it.WEAKNESS: Impatience.

4. STRENGTH: I hope my key strength is the ability to create and maintain a teamwork environment.WEAKNESS: Probably the biggest weakness, and something I'm working on very hard, is the ability to delegate more.

5.STRENGTH: The ability to hire good people.WEAKNESS: I'm probably a bit soft, a bit lax. I don't think I'm a tough enough manager.

7. STRENGTH: Entrepreneurial nature — I find a way to make things work.WEAKNESS: I don't pay enough attention to fine detail, I'm more attracted to the possibilities than the details of implementation. Luckily, I know that and we hire accordingly.

8. STRENGTH: The ability to keep multiple balls up in the air. The very thing that you were critiqued for in school, which was the fact that you were thinking about 12 things at once, is the very thing that keeps you sharp in business.WEAKNESS: I'd genuinely like to have better listening skills.

9. STRENGTH: I don't have any. I guess it's it would be delegating. Not thinking I can do it all. Knowing my limitations.WEAKNESS: My biggest weakness would be probably lack of general business experience.

10. STRENGTH: I have a pretty sound technical knowledge of the field that we're in.WEAKNESS: I'm not formally educated in business. I had to pick it up on the fly.

11. STRENGTH: Vision.WEAKNESS: Staying focussed.

12. STRENGTH: I'm left and right brain — I'm good creatively and technically.WEAKNESS: I'm always looking for compromise. Sometimes I should hit the table with my fist.

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Writer, speaker and consultant on business growth, entrepreneurship and opportunity. My column appears weekly in the National Post. My speaking topics include innovation, best practices, social media, and the future of business success.
Please e-mail me: rick (at) rickspence.ca
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